What is your candidate opinion over opendata ?

Last week, liberTIC launched the french version of its blog where you can follow our local actions and initiatives to open data on a federal level. We have about a hundred connections per day and hope to get more and more as the interest in opening data is growing in France.

One week ago, Rennes, a near city of french Brittany, announced it would open its transport data. This will be the first opendata platform in France.

French CC created a questionary for the federal elections that are taking place in march 2010 in France. They ask french people to send this questionary to their candidates, so we did our part and tweeted our candidates with the link to our blog presenting the initiative.

Creative Commons questions aim to inform voters about candidates interests in opening data and their approach in licencing and reuse.

Our plan :

– Send the questions by tweeter only (gov20 they said)

– Reporting candidates reactions and opinions on these issues

There are eight candidates in our state. Three of them do not have direct or national party tweeter account so we wonder if they will ever know we launched these questions, but we also sent the questions to our local mayor Jean-Marc Ayrault, who happens to be MP too.

Questions are:

Are you in favor of:

1. Acces and free (of charge included) reuse of public data produced and paid by the state
2. Free (of charge included) and access to any published content producted or paid by the state (web informations, etc)
3. Free (of charge included) and access to any federal studies
4. Free (of charge included) and access to data from any organizations paid by the state
5. Publication in open format of federal archives
6. Access and reuse to federal learning content

We are now following the candidates reactions and will get back with the feedbacks.

After the governement made a request, 3 private businesses started working on the creation of a national platform. It should be launched by 2011 and it’s called Data Publica.

But our actions right now are about freeing data in France because they are still out of reach and there is no point in having platforms before getting the data free. Rennes, a nearby city has announced it would free its first transit data in two months. It will be the first time in France so the move has just started. We’ll let you know on this blog

Concerning a platform, we were thinking about eventually using OKFN to show available data in France as they are creating a worldwide catalog for free. Being no “web technicians” meaning we don’t code, we don’t know how to launch websites but your point is good too.

That sounds great. If you do want to increase pressure, there is of course a benefit of cataloging datasets that are not yet free. If the public is made aware of how many datasets the government has and how few are actually available, pressure will increase.

Cataloging non-available data is actually a great idea Peter ! People are usually not aware of the hidden informations. Maybe we’ll organize a working day with volunteers for this purpose. Thanks for the idea :)